Nightmare
by Hemoptysis
Summary: Take a glimpse into the tortured mind of Isaac Clarke as he recalls his harrowing experience on the Sprawl. A one-shot songfic set to Avenged Sevenfold's "Nightmare". Rated T for language and some gore.


_Love Dead Space 2. Love Avenged Sevenfold. So what's a girl to do when she discovers that this game and this song are absolutely PERFECT for each other? This. My first songfic._

_- Hemoptysis_

_I do not own Isaac (even though I wish I did), Dead Space, or the "Nightmare" lyrics._

oOo

**Nightmare**

_**Now your nightmare comes to life…**_

It wasn't over.

But I'd known that for a while now… what little waking time outside of stasis and drug-induced hazes that I'd had over the last three years. It _couldn_'_t _be. I'm not sure _HOW _exactly I knew… maybe it was the seed of mental decay that had implanted itself within my brain that told me so. Or maybe it was the faint whisperings or the constant sense of foreboding that gnawed away at my insides... Either way, I just _knew _it couldn't be over. And I was right.

I knew from the moment that flashlight was being shined into my eyes by some man I didn't even know but somehow seemed to know me, the moment he looked down at me with eyes full of fear and uncertainty and told me that I was in terrible danger, the moment I watched him die and not ten seconds later transform into one of those monstrous demons from my past, that it was happening again. Once more I was being dragged down into a whirlwind of blood, horror, and chaos - dragged down into Hell.

_**Dragged ya down below**_

_**Down to the Devil's show**_

_**To be his guest forever**_

Only this time it wasn't just the _physical _demons - the necromorphs - I was contending with, these twisted monsters of flesh and blood and bone and bad memories. Those I already knew how to deal with, thanks to my time spent aboard the _Ishimura_.

It's the _mental _demons that frighten me more. Because they're worse. And these demons I can't run away from or dismember until they've ceased their hideous screaming.

These demons are so, so much worse.

_**PEACE OF MIND IS LESS THAN NEVER**_

Sometimes I wonder if it would've been better if I'd never been woken up at the start of the infection. Maybe it would've been easier to have simply allowed the necromorphs to tear me apart as I lay comatose and unaware. My life would've been ended quickly and painlessly, before my sluggish brain even had time to realize that my body had been eviscerated. Then I wouldn't have had to bear the burden of this terrible mental disease, a disease that threatened to overwhelm and consume me, leaving nothing but a pitiful, defenseless shell behind. Wait, scratch that - even _more _of a pitiful, defenseless shell.

At that point, I would've welcomed death with open arms rather than have to face _her _again...

_**Hate to twist your mind**_

_**But God ain't on your side**_

_**An old acquaintance severed**_

These demons wear the face of my former lover. They follow me wherever I go, they dog my every goddamned footstep, whisper slithering, poisoned words of guilt and accusation that do so much more damage than a bony scythe from one of those damned creatures ever could. I'm as good as helpless when it comes to these hallucinations… a slave to the Marker's whims.

_**BURN THE WORLD, YOUR LAST ENDEAVOR**_

I feel like a prisoner. A prisoner trapped inside my own fucking mind. I feel like I can't even be alone with my thoughts because I know that _SHE _can just as easily see them, hear them, read them or whatever the fuck it is she does, read them like an open book, a book she can rip the pages out of and rewrite, erase, _warp _and _twist _and fill with _torment _until I have no idea what's real and what's fake anymore. I don't know what to believe.

My own personal Hell on top of the all-too-real Hell that already surrounds me. On all sides.

_**Flesh is burning, you can smell it in the air**_

'_**Cause men like you have such an easy soul to steal**_

I know damn well it isn't really her. This isn't… this isn't the _REAL _Nicole, the _REAL _woman I fell in love with what feels like eons ago… in happier days I can hardly believe I used to have. She's gone, she's dead, and this is just… all in my mind, a gruesome parody of her projected by that… that fucking _ROCK_…

_**So stand in line while they ink numbers in your head**_

_**You're now a slave until the end of time here**_

…But when she's standing right there in front of me, this blood-soaked apparition that whispers through a voice hissing with static, accuses, a perfect manifestation of my every inner doubt, every fear, every last nagging regret… she's more real than anything else.

And it terrifies me.

_**NOTHING STOPS THE MADNESS TURNING**_

_**HAUNTING, YEARNING, PULL THE TRIGGER**_

How could we be so goddamn _stupid_?

Sure, they can smile and lie through their fucking teeth all they'd like, but they know damn well what _really _happened aboard the _Ishimura _three years ago. How… how could we be so blind? So _foolish_?

We'd seen what horrors this so-called "divine relic" unleashes. It's evil. It's something that we should've left alone, right from the beginning. We didn't know just what exactly we were dealing with.

_**You should've known**_

_**The price of evil**_

_**And it hurts to know that you belong here, yeah**_

We were like a bunch of stupid kids, playing around with daddy's gun. And now we're paying the price. _INNOCENT _people are paying the price.

_**IT'S YOUR FUCKING NIGHTMARE**_

Running hardly helped.

_**While your nightmare comes to life…**_

It began with my arms being bound tightly to my body in a damn straitjacket, and running was all I could do, stumbling madly through the dark and fighting to keep my balance as the other patients were brutally slaughtered and transformed around me, chasing me and wailing like the Devil himself was on my heels.

"_Isaac_… _we_'_re all gonna BURN for what we did to you_." The last thing the man who had subjected me to countless repetitive and mentally exhausting interviews and then cut me free so I could escape had whispered before slitting his own throat as I watched, painting the glass window behind him red with his blood.

I'm still not sure what exactly he meant by that. But fuck if I care. The man was cruel and arrogant. He didn't deserve to live.

At least now I could grasp the full scope of the carnage that had been unleashed upon the city. The city I couldn't even remember being brought to in the first place.

_**Can't wake up and sweat**_

'_**Cause it ain't over yet**_

_**Still dancing with your demons**_

And then I was contacted by some man I wasn't sure I knew… Stross. He told me… he told me that they had used him to construct a new Marker, the one responsible for this new necromorph outbreak, and that they had used me, too. Codes, numbers, sequences, all stored away in the farthest recesses of our brains, all of them had gone towards the creation of this new Marker.

Am I wrong to feel that somehow, indirectly… that I'm one partially responsible for this new infestation because of it?

_**VICTIM OF YOUR OWN CREATION**_

I only had two options at this point; fight or die. And I'm not one to roll over and allow myself to die… as much as I'd wondered before whether or not death would've been a more peaceful ending.

Now I had the tiniest flicker of hope, dangling just beyond my reach, tantalizingly… a woman, named Daina. She contacted me, too, and told me that I was suffering from some unique form of dementia, something I had contracted on Aegis VII. I had no idea how she knew this, but I didn't care, not at all. What I _did _care about was the promise she made, that she could help me. That if I could make it to her, she could help me, cure my dementia and free me from this torment.

I was desperate.

_**Beyond the will to fight**_

_**Where all that's wrong is right**_

_**Where hate don't need a reason**_

With all of these symbols, these voices and hallucinations, _HER _voice, pounding themselves relentlessly into my skull like a fist beating on a drum, no, like the beating of a _HEART_… how could I refuse?

_**LOATHING, SELF-ASSASSINATION**_

She lied.

Perhaps I'm just too trusting a person. Or perhaps just incredibly naïve. Either way, she lied. She lied to me. Lied and deceived me like every other fucking person I draw in. She reminds me of somebody else, somebody I'm sure I used to know and trust and then lied to me, too, but I can't really remember. My memories of the last three years are still hazy, at best.

_**You've been lied to just to rape you of your sight**_

_**And now they have the nerve to tell you how to feel**_

I'd dragged myself halfway through Hell, only to suddenly find myself restrained… that bitch Daina looking on, a smug smirk plastered across her face like I'm sure she'd had the entire time, stringing me along like the gullible fool I am. Turns out she was just another Unitologist, sent to recapture and use me. Apparently, that's all I'm useful for anymore. Of course.

I found myself actually preferring the doctors and psychiatrists to these bastards; what I can remember of them, anyway. The people who had examined me like some interesting organism underneath a microscope for those three years I spent there. Stross told me about the "sessions". Sessions? I don't think I remember any "sessions". At least, not the ones involving the "steps" he kept blabbering on about. The only ones I can remember now are the many interviews. It was always the same damn questions, every time I was woken up, over and over again. About the _Ishimura_. The Marker. Nicole.

_**So sedated as they medicate your brain**_

_**And while you slowly go insane, they tell ya**_

They must not have gotten any straight answers out of me. None worth having, anyway, because all I can remember after that is a steady stream of medication that dulled my senses and made me oblivious to the world around me. They wanted to keep me quiet. Nice and tame. Manageable.

I can still see their faces in my mind's eye, silhouetted against the harsh glare of the overhead lights as they strapped me down to my seat and administered my "treatments", their lips forming the words:

_**GIVEN WITH THE BEST INTENTIONS**_

_**HELP YOU WITH YOUR COMPLICATIONS**_

But I'm free now. That's all behind me, _they_'_re _all behind me now. They deserved what they got, and now I can focus on what's important. Escape. Getting out alive. Survival. Just like on the _Ishimura _three years before, only with a bit more experience this time around.

Wait… I shouldn't say I'm "free". I'm really not. I can never _truly _be free. Not when I have my lovely guardian _demon _following me wherever I go…

_**You should've known**_

_**The price of evil**_

I wanted to give up.

_**And it hurts to know that you belong here, yeah**_

Fuck trust. Fuck hope. Fuck peace of mind. I lost faith in all three a long time ago. I'm pretty sure I actually used to be a nice guy… but lies, fear, anguish, and ceaseless torment have turned me into somebody cold and jaded. I'm not the same man anymore. Honestly, I can't even bring myself to fully trust Ellie at this point, though I'd never tell her that outright. It's the increasing sense of paranoia.

It's understandable when most of the women I've had dealings with up to now only wanted to fuck me over in the end.

_**No one to call**_

_**Everybody to fear**_

_**Your tragic fate is looking so clear, yeah**_

I really don't know why I keep pushing onwards sometimes. I feel empty, hollow. Numbed by the seemingly inevitable realization that happiness and peace will always be beyond my bloody reach. I can't even begin to try hoping for them. I'm too afraid that I'll finally get close enough to see them, _touch_ them… only to see them snatched away from me yet again, plunging me back into a swirling maelstrom of gore and terror and annihilation…

_**IT'S YOUR FUCKING NIGHTMARE**_

I am no longer a man.

Not a man… more like a finely-tuned killing machine.

I sometimes feel like I'm watching myself slaughter my way through these creatures from outside of my body. Have I really become this… _mindless_? Does killing really come this easily to me now?

Well, when you're caught in the thick of the battle… there's no room for complex thought. Everything becomes purely reflexive. You have to keep all, if any thought, short and simple. React. Don't think too hard about it. _React_. Eyes and ears, keep them open.

You follow these rules if you want to survive.

_**FIGHT**_

_**Not to FAIL**_

_**Not to FALL**_

I step over the corpses of innocent civilians. They knew nothing of these necromorph monstrosities… how would _they_ know those rules?

I try to maintain an emotional distance as I stop and cut off their limbs, I no longer even bat an eyelash as the tepid blood of men, women, _children _sprays over my hands and arms and the legs of my suit when I finish the job by stomping through the remains of their bones with sickening cracking sounds.

They'll only be infected and become necromorphs themselves if I don't.

And I can't have that.

_**Or you'll end up like the others**_

I… I actually _SMILE _when I kill now.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of that.

Maybe it's because that with every twisted limb that I sever, feeling that gush of thick, dark blood splash against me and hearing the animalistic wails dissolve into gurgles and then silence, I know that's one less obstacle that stands in my way of survival.

In the beginning… I felt, deep down, like a murderer. These things had been human once. Parents, friends, lovers, children… it wasn't their fault that they'd been reduced to _this_…

But then I remember that they're no longer _really _people. All they are now are demons wearing flayed human skins, remnants of a past life. A _meaningful _life. Now they're barely distinguishable from rabid beasts.

It's either them or me.

_**DIE**_

_**Die AGAIN**_

_**Drenched in SIN**_

_**With no respect for another**_

…I'm actually a little curious. Sometimes I can't help but wonder… can these monsters think at all?

I mean, they _WERE _formed from the bodies of dead humans… did they retain _any_ semblance of rational thought at all after their infection, even as they came hurtling towards me on shaking limbs, all bone and torn flesh and the reek of decay and the screeching?

I think about what their thoughts might be like. That is, if they have any thoughts at all. I bet they're short and simple, too. But they don't think of survival. Only dim, linear concepts of killing and mutilation.

_**DOWN**_

_**Feel the FIRE**_

_**Feel the HATE**_

A necromorph bursts out of a ventilation shaft behind me, digging its scythe-like limbs into my shoulders before I even have time to react, pulling me close. I feel it try to sink its jagged teeth into the side of my neck, fleshy tendrils inside the throat wrapping themselves around it and it _hurts_, even through the protective mesh of my suit…

_**Your pain is what we desire**_

I struggle and finally manage to pull myself away, whirl around, raise the Plasma Cutter and sever the legs with two flashes of blue light. It snarls and continues to pull itself towards me with those twisted scythes, and I fire one last time and make damn sure that fucker stays down for good. And then I realize that these things _definitely _have no human consciousness left, that they're merely mindless, soulless drones through which the infection spreads, defiles, claims the body of yet another lost loved one to join its ranks.

There's no point in showing mercy.

_**LOST**_

_**Hit the WALL**_

_**Watch you CRAWL**_

_**Such a replaceable liar**_

And every step of the way, _SHE _would be there. Watching. Waiting.

Waiting for me to let my guard down for even the slightest fraction of a second. Just long enough for her to worm her way into the cracks and begin the vile whispering again, filling my brain with the sadness and doubt and somehow, even the longing…

_**And I know you hear their voices**_

I still don't know how many times I told myself she wasn't real. That this warped apparition was only the grotesque product of both my dementia and the influence of the Marker… but deep down… I don't think I really believed that at one point. She _WAS _real. She _HAD _to be. She almost killed me. She could _touch _me, for God's sake!

Even though when I opened my eyes and found that it wasn't Nicole, but my own hand about to ram the syringe into my eye socket, I told myself it had been her doing.

Maybe I just didn't want to accept the fact that I _was_ just slowly but surely losing my mind.

_**And I know they may seem real**_

Nicole… was like my angel. And my demon. My blessing and my curse. I was terrified to see her… and yet secretly elated, in a sick, strange way. I know it was because of my guilt, the guilt of knowing that she was dead only because I had encouraged her to take that job aboard the _Ishimura_, and if I hadn't, she would still be alive. I just missed her so much… I was happy to see even this empty ghost of her again.

Eventually her demanding dissolved into pleading… soft pleading for me to accept the "steps", to "make us whole". _Make us whole_…? I'm not even sure what the fuck that's supposed to mean… all I knew then was that I couldn't do it. I just _couldn_'_t_.

_**But our life's made up of choices**_

I couldn't let her go. Towards the end… she looked just like the woman I'd loved beyond measure. Blonde hair, those soft blue eyes… beautiful. So beautiful.

But that's exactly how the Marker wanted me to see her, isn't it?

Because I'd finally accepted that I could no longer run away… that I had to end this… maybe that's why she became so placid…

Somehow, it knew, it's just a big chunk of fucking rock but somehow it always _KNOWS_, that I was getting weaker, both physically and mentally, and I would be at my most vulnerable. And like a moth to a flame, I was drawn in by her… only to find myself suddenly trapped in a desperate struggle for survival more intense than any I'd ever faced before… inside my own mind.

_**They took for granted your soul, and it's ours now to steal**_

There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. This was it. The moment of truth.

It was time to face the source of my every internal woe head-on.

_**As your nightmare comes to life…**_

So _THIS _is what "becoming whole" was? Assimilating the body and mind of the Marker's creators? I'd be _damned _if I'd let that happen.

I still don't remember much of the "battle" itself… mostly just faint memories of a swirling, discordant landscape, populated by small, shadowed figures that tore at me with ragged claws as I struggled, struggled against the Marker, against Nicole. That distorted, evil doppelgänger of her... I remember her screaming, my screaming, and then…

_**You should've known**_

_**The price of evil**_

_**And it hurts to know that you belong here, yeah**_

…It was over.

In destroying that wicked vision of Nicole… I somehow destroyed the Marker itself.

Of course, it was probably more than likely the Sprawl's imploding and collapsing that _actually _destroyed the Marker… but I still can't help but suspect that I played _some _small part in it. The creator rejecting the creation, perhaps?

I had resigned myself to my fate… I sat in a quiet daze among the wreckage as the buildings fell to pieces around me. I knew I would die there… and I accepted that. At least in death… I could be with the _real _Nicole again… free of all my worldly torments. Free of pain.

But funnily enough… a rare bit of luck decided to shine itself down upon me, and I found myself unexpectedly rescued. Leave it to Ellie to find a way to maneuver a stolen gunship around an entire sector of a collapsing city to save me. I owe her my life.

Though… a small part of me still believes that death is the more welcoming option.

Now we're both on the run. Fugitives. EarthGov's prey. The Church's prey. We can never stop running. As long as we breathe, they'll never stop searching for us. For me.

_**No one to call**_

I know I should feel safer. Even just the slightest bit. Once again I'd clawed my way through the nine blood-soaked circles of Hell and lived to tell the tale. Now I could finally close my eyes and rest.

…But I don't.

Every time I close my eyes, the gruesome horrors they've seen replay themselves like mental recordings, over and over again, as if they're forever imprinted on their surfaces. And I'm sure they are. I know I'll never have true rest because of them, and I'll never be safe again. Everybody around me, everybody who so much as even comes into _contact_ with me, is a target. Their lives are in danger.

No matter what Ellie says, this is _MY _burden. My burden to bear _ALONE_.

_**Everybody to fear**_

So I'll keep running. But as hard as I run, I'll never escape them. My haunting memories. The _Ishimura_. The Sprawl. The necromorphs. EarthGov. The Church. The guilt.

Nicole.

It's all my Hell.

My curse.

_**Your tragic fate is looking so clear, yeah**_

My inescapable nightmare.

_**IT'S YOUR FUCKING NIGHTMARE**_

oOo

…_And then Kaitlyn discovered that writing psychological stuff isn't quite as easy as she'd hoped._

_Well… there really isn't much of a plot here, that much you can tell. It was mostly meant to be a sort of disjointed peek into Isaac's thoughts as he looks back on the Sprawl incident… with the lyrics kind of highlighting his memories. Easier said than done… hope it managed to translate. Any reviews would be greatly appreciated!_

_Fellow Dead Space fans, if you've never listened to this song, or any Avenged Sevenfold, for that matter… then you're really missing out, I promise you!_


End file.
